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Archive for December, 2009

A puzzle unremarkable except for some very obscure (defined as when I have to google long and hard) references to William Shakespeare’s Last Will & Testament (http://home.att.net/~mleary/shakwill.htm) and also the position of the altar from Medieval History at http://historymedren.about.com/od/aentries/a/11_altars_4.htm (which, incidentally, I would not have bothered but for the fact that I have to at least appear knowledgeable when blogging this puzzle). Some snippets of gems sprinkled all over but not enough to erase the less-than-satisfactory flavour from this setter’s apparent fondness for the abstruse

As It Occurred To Me this week: I won 2nd prize in a contest!
You’re right, it wasn’t a Beauty Contest and I wasn’t playing Monopoly.
It was a crossword contest: The 2009 “3D Calendar puzzle” indeed.
So I have no hesitation, in best Smashy’n’Nicey “does a lotta work for chariddy” manner, in shamelessly plugging next year’s offering.
Follow these links and Buy! Buy! Buy!

This was easily the toughest Beelzebub I can remember having come across. A first, unaided session yielded only three or four answers. Reinforcements were called in, and the remainder of the puzzle took two of us several hours. In a couple of places, entries seem to differ from anything I could find in Chambers, but I may simply not have been looking hard enough.

An Azed of average difficulty this week, I think; I needed a dictionary to check several answers. The words ‘whample’ and ‘sprangle’ were both delightful discoveries. No clue stands out as favourite of the week, but I’ll give my vote to 10a.

I would like to say thank you to the Fifteensquared team members who have all taken time out of their busy schedules to post blogs during the past twelve months. I’m sure your efforts have been much appreciated, particularly by those new or relatively new to cryptic puzzles.

I have to take my hat off to Shed for this: most of the puzzle was straightforward (and well-clued) but three answers (MORTAR, SCARFACE and CRIMEA) had me truly stumped and accounted for well over half of my time. Moreover, none was in any way obscure or unfair and I kicked myself as I finally solved each.

No Phi today, maybe he’ll feature on Saturday this week. Instead what I found quite a tough puzzle from Morph esp SE corner. I failed on 24 across, which I understand now having looked at the Indy website. Time at the puzzle, 50 mins or so.

A nice puzzle that started comfortably but posed some difficulty at the end, with 6A taking up the max. time and I’m still not sure if it’s right. I enjoyed solving on the whole, but with a few nitpicks mentioned against the answers.